Link bonding, which is also referred to as Ethernet bonding, channel bonding, or network bonding in some instances, allows two or more transmission channels, such as communications subscriber line pairs (e.g., in a xDSL system), to be combined at the symbol, bit, byte, frame or flow level for creating a virtual transmission channel having a higher bandwidth than a single transmission channel. This bonding across multiple communications line pairs, also termed “links,” provides Ethernet over Copper (EoCu) products the ability to create high bandwidth communications pipes for communication of Ethernet and similar data traffic. By bonding multiple copper subscriber line pairs together, higher bandwidth services can typically be provided over long distances while higher speeds are accomplished over the multiple bonded subscriber line pairs. This bonded data link, also termed Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM), typically treats the multiple copper lines as a unified physical layer. For example, the IEEE 802.3ah Standard, the disclosure which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, provides an ability to auto-detect which pairs are connected between two devices and are, therefore, eligible to be aggregated into a single Ethernet connection. Another example is the G.998.2 Recommendation, for example, as applied with Single-pair High-speed Digital Subscriber Line (SHDSL) for Ethernet-Based Multi-Pair Bonding, the disclosure which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. An example of a bonding system is found in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 7,693,090, the disclosure which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, where the bonding system discovers physical medium entities (PME's) as an example. Some of these bonding systems are delay and jitter sensitive, and it is desirable to overcome the technical problems associated with these delay and jitter sensitive bonding systems.
Additionally, there are some algorithms that fragment large packets over the subscriber line pairs forming bonding groups. These algorithms sometimes lead to undesirable results in throughput and latency performance of the packets across the bonding group. Some users of such systems are interested in maximizing throughput over the bonding group, but the latency characteristics such as the maximum delay and delay variations become increasingly important and should be addressed. It is desirable to use an algorithm that leads to a minimal delay for packet transmission across the bonding group. The motivation for this technical problem is driven by upstream data rates over EFM-bonding ADSL loops, but may apply generally to any fragmentation over bonded links in a bonding group.